So, What's Up? I've been working a lot on the outline of my sequel and another character sketch, this time of a dragon. I'm in need of another big phototshop project. Some time ago I started making a map of TriCora, a fictional world in a pocket dimension featured in my story. I've been using real satellite photos, cutting out the coasts and pasting them together in fictional formations to create realistic coastlines for the three continents. I might follow up on that. With both projects I'll post results once I have them. Thanks for being patient.
Posts
Name Ideas I've been working a lot on the outline for my sequel and that's coming along well. When I exercise I'll think about scenes and characters for it. I've also pondered names for my first book. The working title was 'Signature Rainbows Wane' but that didn't have enough description that it's a sci-fi book. I looked over some other book titles and remembered 'The Chronicles of Amber'- equally poetic yet it gets across the nature of the series. Taking inspiration from this my title will be 'The Signature Chronicles Rainbows Wane'. This does a much better job advertising the content. Just for fun, here's a photo of an Abert's Squirrel.
Choosing A Name For Your Book I've been doing a lot of research on marketing my upcoming book and it starts right there on the front cover. For the longest time the working title for my book has been Rainbows Wane. But how marketable is that? Would people pick it up who were interested in sci-fi? I don't think so. Of course I'd have to change my blog and web domain too. It's a lot of work so I need to be sure. The best way to do that is some research; asking people! That's the next step. The book was called Rainbows Wane because in it god was split into several beings by an alien force; like light being refracted by a prism. It's fitting and poetic but not from a marketing standpoint. This will require a lot of thought. I'll keep you posted.
Reworking Old Photoshop Projects I have a plethora of creative ideas yet realizing them is not always easy. Many are the times I've make an interesting dreamscape in concept but it ends up a mess in execution. This is very much like sketching original monsters where it needs a rough draft made first. Only then can the final version be properly planned and designed. The Weeping Clogway is a good example of this. I had the idea of willows weeping a great labyrinth of rivers held aloft by wooden pipes. This was inspired by a dream and will be featured as a location in my book Signature Ghate. You can see here how it turned out: I'm quite pleased with this; it was a lot of work to cutout wooden pipes and layer willow leaves over them. It is a "clogway" after all. Here's the original version I mentioned: Great idea but poorly executed. The pieces were all there but fell into a jumble. Fortunately I was a...
Weak Poses VS Strong Poses When drawing without a reference finding the right pose can prove difficult. I'll often have to sketch the same character over and over to finally get it right. This applies to monsters too. The Snakoth is a monster from my novel, which I posted a sketch of earlier. Although it wasn't bad it could be improved in both pose and proportions. Here is a better version: Sadly a little bit of it couldn't fit on the paper. For comparison here is the earlier version: You can see the pose is generally weaker with it standing still unlike the action pose of the former. The arms don't make work of foreshortening as well either. But it was a good jumping off point. Practice makes perfect.
Bismuth I went on vacation and visited a rock and fossil shop. There I purchased a piece of bismuth. Bismuth has a beautiful crystal formation caused by it's low melting point. Working with bismuth and other crystals on photoshop is extremely fun. I was inspired to make my next dreamscape a city but composed of bismuth. I'll post it sometime in the future.
Poems and Monster Sketches I've been working on a poem and it's going quite well. I'm wary of sharing unpublished work online but eventually hope to complete a full book of poetry. In other news, I completed the snakoth sketch. It's good but now that I've figured out how the monster will look and stand on paper I can do better. Sketches have rough drafts too. This is a monster who appears in my novel: